Highly creative yet one of the least spotlight-attracting jobs there is: professional makeup artist. Ever wondered what it entails? Wonder no more as we shine some light on the subject.

Life is a stage!

Makeup your own mind

June 17, 2014

Highly creative yet one of the least spotlight-attracting jobs there is: professional makeup artist. Ever wondered what it entails? Wonder no more as we shine some light on the subject.

What could be better than going to sleep at night knowing you made the world a more beautiful place that day?

As a professional makeup artist, you may not be in the spotlight yourself – in fact, the better your work, the more invisible you are half the time – but what you do quite often is. A makeup artist’s work (quite often works of art) is everywhere! Look around you. Ballet, opera, music videos, magazine shoots, album covers, theater, the circus, sports events, fashion shows, haute couture, even bas couture, ‘Red Carpet’ events, film, festivals, anywhere special effects and prosthetics are called for….should we go on? And that’s just the high profile stuff. Makeup artists are also of paramount service in the medical world, working their magic for those with scars and disfiguring burns.

Two contradictory words that come up repeatedly when makeup artists talk about the qualities they need to perform well in their craft: patience and speed. “You have to be patient to be a good makeup artist, you can’t rush through or skip steps.” But, conversely, you have to be fast. If a dancer has three minutes to do a costume and full makeup change, you have to be deft precise at what you do. Thriving under pressure is probably a great quality to have.

At its simplest, makeup artistry improves someone’s appearance, bringing out their best features and camouflaging others. But at its most imaginative, it means mapping out the personality of a character in performance, countering the effects of lighting and cameras, hiding flaws, full body and face painting.

We have only touched upon the tip of the iceberg, but perhaps you finish reading with a sense of the limitless possibilities to be found in a professional makeup artist’s world. Unpredictable, that world is never boring.